Gunbound Sate Guide

Low delay: You can beat any other player’s shot 1 if you shoot after them and don’t spend as much time aiming as they did.

Angle fuxing: The shot makes a big round hole if it hits land. If the enemy is in a slope and you’re close to them, plant shot 1 at their feet and it may ruin their angle.

Bunge: If you need to bunge an enemy on a small bit of land, shot 1 eats more dirt than shot 2 and is more likely to drop them down.

Misses can hit: If a shot lands past them but they’re in the line of fire between you and the tracer, they still can get hit.

Shot 2 –

Delay: 880 Damage: ~250

Low delay: As shot 2’s go, this is fast. If you have a small delay advantage and someone uses shot 2, you can use your own shot 2 and then beat their delay… even vs. boomer’s low delay.

High damage: A clean hit can go up to 300 vs organic bots, who are weak to Sate (so Sate rapes boomer). An average hit is 240, as strong as many other popular bots like Armor and Boomer. Even a sloppy hit that misses a bit can be 150-200.

Angle fuxing: Shooting from right to left, your shot 2 can make a vertical pit and put the enemy into it. They may be forced to shoot through dirt afterwards.

SS –

Delay: 1280 Damage: ~450

Low delay: Good delay for an SS, if the enemy tries any SS you just SS back, but take less time to aim, and your delay wins. Naturally the SS delay is better than any dual’s delay.

High damage: One of the most damaging SSes in the game, 400 vs almost anyone for a solid hit, 450-500 for a very good hit vs low defense bots and organics. Even turtle can take over 400 from it.

Giant pit: Not a big advantage but fun and sometimes useful. The SS makes a deep vertical hole. If you’re lucky the enemy will end up in that hole. If a cake is on your team (or is your tag) you can suck an enemy into the hole and leave them with no angle or even bunged (on thin maps like adiumroot).

Easy to use: You still neet a fairly precise hit, but you don’t need to concentrate as hard with the SS as you do when using the other shots. The SS’s vertical firing pattern means you can land the tracer on any part of the enemy and still do some damage, and the SS can be shotgunned when from right to left, unlike most other damaging SSes. It also doesn’t have the strange hurricane properties of shot 1 or 2. If you can land the SS’s tracer on the enemy when shooting through a hurricane, you can usually get full damage from it. That’s much harder to do with shot 2.

Disadvantages:

Shot 1:

– Useless if the enemy is far away and has land in front of them, the land blocks the shot 1’s laser, which fires at a low flat angle.

– Does not dig through land, is easily blocked by a pixel in front of you or in front of the enemy. A near miss does no damage also.

Shot 2:

– Quirky aiming means you must adapt your shot based on enemy’s distance and your position (whether you’re to their left or right). It’s easy to miss half the lasers even when your tracer lands directly on the enemy.

– At long range, your laser spread is so wide that half your shot will miss no matter how perfectly you place the shot. This limits long range damage potential if there’s no weather effect or SS to help you.

– Cannot always be shotgunned or easily aimed like direct hit shots.

– Like shot 1, also has trouble with enemies who are far away and have some dirt in front of them. Your lasers come at the enemy at about 45 degrees no matter what angle you used to shoot your tracer. An enemy in a deep pit or with a wall of dirt in front can’t be hit.

– Often gets no benefit from force, and sometimes very little help from thor. Hurricane completely screws you over by making the shot twice as hard as any other mobile’s hurricane shot. Lightning gives a nice damage bonus, but sometimes the first round of lasers and lightning bunges so much that a second shot from a dual will miss.

SS:

– No real disadvantage unless you’re inside a hurricane and shoot a close enemy. The SS then tries to pass through the nado and some of it will usually miss.

Deeper info:

-Difference between shooting left and shooting right:

Sate’s Shot 2 lasers always rain down from left to right. This can affect how close the lasers come to the enemy’s core and where you want to aim to get maximum damage.

If Sate is on the left: Aim to place the tracer in the center of the enemy’s body or, ideally, a tiny bit behind their center. You don’t want to land the shot at their feet or try to shotgun. Shots that hit this way often do very low damage. Even an SS that is shotgunned at full power into the front of the enemy mobile will do less than half the usual damage.

If Sate is on the right: Aim to place the tracer a bit in front of the enemy, like right at their feet. Because hitting their front is ideal, you can shotgun from right to left. Therefore whenever I am on the right side of the enemy, I try to do full power shotguns with shot 2 or otherwise fire with a very low angle (like 20). This gives lots of room for error on your shot’s power control and makes nailing full 250+ damage quite easy. Being on the right owns if you’re Sate.

-Angle ruining: If you’re close to the enemy and you see them in a vulnerable position (like they’re using a steep hill to get angle) you can use shot 1 to ruin their angle. An even cooler trick is this: if you’re on the right side, plant a shot 2 a bit in front of their feet, like half a mobile width. The shot will mostly miss, but the lasers will make a perfect vertical narrow hole and the enemy will take a bit of damage and drop into that hole. When they try to shoot again they will waste a turn shooting through a bit of dirt. Even when an enemy is already in a narrow hole like this, it’s possible to land another shot 2 and KEEP them in a screwed situation with no angle. It’s very demoralizing, especially for those with bad movement or low angles (it’s great vs Nak, other Sate’s, and Lightning). This trick can allow a Sate player with low health to beat an enemy with much more life by just constantly ruining his angle with carefully placed shot 2’s. Remember it’s from the right side only (didn’t I say Sate is happy on the right?). If you’re on the left, your shot 2 just sort of ‘mows the lawn’ by spraying horizontally across the dirt.

-Far range: Already you know that Sate has to miss intentionally a little to get great damage from the lasers… that is, on the left side you want to miss behind them a tiny bit, and on the right you want to land the shot a tiny bit in front. When shooting far, you must increase the distance that you ‘miss’ your enemy by. That is, a shot from the left side must not only land behind the enemy, it must miss them totally hit land on the ground behind them. If you’re on the right side, you have to make the shot land quite far in front of them, … the tracer never comes near them, but the lasers still smack them.

-SS: When firing the SS, a center hit is pretty much always ideal. What’s a little weird is that if you’re on the left, you can’t shotgun the SS (as you’d expect). If you’re on the right, you CAN, but be careful. A close range, full power shotgun can sometimes send the SS tracer halway through their body so that it activates a bit past their center. Instead of a nice center hit, you get a crappy half-hit on their back side. So shotgunning the SS at full power is probably bad on either side. Just shoot with a normal amount of power while aiming directly at the enemy, and your SS will be OK. My strategy: Save the SS for difficult situations. Sate’s shot 2 has some weaknesses with long range shots, hurricanes, and shooting enemies who are hiding behind a wall of dirt. The SS doesn’t have any of these problems. Save it for these situations when a shot 2 just won’t be good enough to do decent damage. The SS is also great for item lock weather, you can make an important shot for 400 damage while many of the other bots are stuck doing 250 at most.

-Hurricane: To hit through a hurricane, the tracer must land quit a bit behind the enemy. Then the lasers wrap around the tornado and hit an area in front of the tracer’s landing place. You must control your power carefully and have some imagination to make ‘nado shots with Sate. The more vertical the shot is, the closer your tracer should land to the enemy. E.g. for angle 80 you might want the tracer to land only 2 or 3 mobile widths behind the enemy. For a lower angle like 45, you might want to put it 1/4th of a screen or more behind the enemy. It also depends on the distance between you and the tornado. Try to imagine the lasers travelling from your Satellite high in the sky to the ground behind your enemy. If you can imagine a good nado shot, all you need to do is put the tracer in the right spot using your best feeling or formulas. It’s a bit easier to hit a tornado shot using your shot 1. You may want to stick to shot 1 during tornados. One very strong trick is to fire a test shot with 1, then fire an SS through the ‘nado. It looks pro but it’s really easy – if the test shot tracer landed on the enemy, then an SS with the same angle and power will hit for good dmg. IMPORTANT: If you’re sitting inside a hurricane, be very careful how close you try to plant your tracer. When shooting from inside a nado, your shot 2 will rain almost straight down and you can easily hit yourself.

-Lightning: When there’s lightning, it might be a good plan to use a powerup like duals. Sate gets a good damage bonus from lightning, better than almost anyone else does. Remember the slight bunge effect from your first shot when dualling, you might want to land the shot a little closer to you than usual to make up for the fact that the enemy will drop after the first hit. In other words, aim to hit their feet if shooting from the left side, and aim to hit a bit in front of their feet when shooting from the right side.

-Thor: You can dual like anyone else when thor comes out.

-Force: In order for force to affect your shot, both your tracer AND the laser must pass through the force. If the tracer passes through but the laser doesn’t, then the damage is just normal. So you don’t want to dual every time you see force, like most others would. The damage bonus is usually small.

-Dual+: There’s a bug with this, it happens often (not always). If you fire shot 2 first, the shot 2 will hit normally, but the followup shot 1 will just disappear and do no damage. If you fire shot 1 first, you will get both attacks and full damage. In general you always want to use shot 1 first with dual+ because the delay for the dual+ item is added to whatever shot you use with it. Doing shot 1 first therefore gets you lower delay as well as sure damage.

-Dealing with angle fuxing: If you have no angle to shoot the enemy there are a few ways to deal with it: Dumb way: Fire shot 2 at the small bit of land blocking your shot. Then the lasers will blast away the land and also do a decent chunk of damage to you. Slightly smarter way: Fire shot 1 at the chunk of land, blowing it away without hurting yourself. Smartest way: Put Sate all the way under the small lip of land that’s blocking your shot, then turn around and shoot behind you with either 1 or 2 (depending on how much angle you need). This creates a sure angle for your next turn, and the land that was blocking your shot before might also help block the enemy’s shot.

Formulas:

I mostly use fixed power shots with Sate. The simplest formula is like using the armor 2.4 method, but with Sate you will use 2.5 bars. The exact formula works like this:

1. Measure the distance between you and the enemy. There are 30 ‘distance units’ to 1 screen. So an enemy who is half a screen away would be 15 distance units away from you. How to tell how far away they are? The easiest method is to right click and drag your screen so that you’re at the edge of the screen (half on the screen, half off). If the enemy is positioned directly below the circular wind marker at the top of the screen, that’s a half screen shot. If they’re on the other side of the screen (half on and half off like you) then that’s a 1 screen shot … so that’s 30 distance units.

2. Starting at angle 90, lower your angle by the number of distance units between you and the enemy. For example, we know that an enemy half a screen away is 15 units away. So 90-15 = angle 75.

3. Fire at 2.5 bars of power. If you’re shooting from right to left, it can be helpful to reduce power a bit because that’s the best way to get full damage on the enemy and ruin their angle.

Some quick references – if you don’t get this formula then just memorize these 4 simple rules.

If an enemy is between these distances, just estimate how to change your angle as a result, for example if the enemy is about halfway between 2/3rds screen and 1 screen away… you know 2/3 screen is 70, and 1 screen is 60, so halfway between them is … 65. So you’d use angle 65, 2.5 bars to hit that enemy.

Wind adjustment:

– Raise angle if wind is ‘helping’ your shot, i.e. blowing up or towards the enemy to carry the shot further.

– Lower angle if wind is ‘hindering’ your shot, i.e. blowing down or against you to hold the shot back.

How much to raise or lower your angle? You can use my windchart:

Basically you divide the current wind strength by a certain number, and then raise or lower your angle by the result. The ‘certain number’ depends on the wind’s direction and I give the math for it above.

Other shooting info:

-At full power 84 = half screen distance 78 = 1 screen distance.

-Angle 8 or so is a 1 screen shotgun, so if you’re on the left and an enemy is even with you and 1 screen away, fire at angle 8 with full power to hit them. If they’re a bit above or below you can just change your angle a bit. If they’re further away, raise your angle to compensate. Obviously nobody should be in between you and the enemy and you’ll want to only try this from the right side, where shotgunning works for full damage.

-If you have trouble shotgunning at full power, try a low angle like 20. With angle 20, the shot flies just high enough to pass over small hills like the kind you see in metamine or miramo town. At angle 20, half a screen is 1.6 bars and 1 screen is about 2.4 bars.

General advice:

-Don’t high angle or use formulas on every shot just because you can. It’s easier to plant your shot carefully with a simple angle between 40 and 60 degrees. Sate requires precision to get full damage. It’s very hard to plant your shot precisely when using max power.

-Watch delay, because nobody’s better at stealing turns than Sate (except I guess boomer, mage, and the guys who use shot 1 always).

-Take the easy, smart shot. What I mean is, for example, if the enemy is on land directly above you, don’t try to hit the floor they’re standing on, just drop the tracer anywhere below them (you can even use almost 0 power if you’re sitting below them). Your lasers come from above always, so as long as the tracer lands directly below their center, the lasers will hit them for full damage. Also try to use the shot that will have the best chance of success. If the enemy is behind a tornado, don’t dual with shot 2 unless you like to be hated. That kind of stunting is ok for pros who use armor but it’s just too hard with Sate. Also keep in mind that if the enemy has dirt in front of them, you probably should try to drill with shot 2 instead of trying to smack them with shot 1 (even if they have very little life left). Also watch for enemies who have a little hole under them. You can put the tracer into that hole even if you’re far away and you’ll still get full damage from your lasers. Let’s say your teammate misses a bit in front of the enemy and makes a hole in the ground just in front of them. If you fire with too much power and your shot flies over, you get no damage. If you fire with just the right power, you get great damage. If you fire with too little power and your shot flies into the hole your teammate made, the tracer might still end up somewhere below the enemy, which means you might still get ok damage. So if you’re worried about screwing up, remember that shooting with a bit less power is a safer shot than shooting with a bit too much.

-Remember that if your angle is blocked when facing forwards, you can try moving to the back of the hole you’re in and face the sky. You can sometimes get a good enough backwards angle this way to hit the enemy.

-Don’t blow off the left/right thing as being unimportant trivia. It really is important if you want to play Sate. You will be a much better player if you take advantage of the ability to shotgun from the right side and if you take care to overshoot a hair from the left.

Ok, that’s my Sate quikki guide. Go out and be pro with the bot all the other pros avoid.